DEV

Bigger Buildings and New Mutants

Sprint 27 is here and in addition to covering a few goals carried over from 26, our biggest tasks are: upgrading to UE 4.20.2, speeding up iteration time, upgrading trueSky to fix some of our lingering weather issues, and addressing any bugs from the last sprint.

We made a big push to get our first quest ready to play. Centering around the Communication Tower, players explore the surrounding area fighting off dangers, gathering loot, and completing quest goals. As this picture of the tower with a little morning mist shows, the area is looking great.
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However, Lahaina is a big place, and we’re moving on to bigger buildings, namely the Municipal Veil Station, and the Thorcon Power Plant. Being a little bit more play ready, we’re working on building out the areas around the Thorcon. We plan on making it the temporary social hub for the game, and are working on filling it up with useful items for players, as well as making it an interesting place to explore. The team has a few concepts for the surrounding areas, and are working to improve materials for our procedural building system.

The Veil Station still needs a lot of performance improvements before it can become the main hangout for players. We’re working on a number of updates and improvements inside to help performance, while we work on grunging up the exterior to properly represent 60+ years of neglect and encroaching jungle.

We found some of our mutants to be a bit too tough so we plan on balancing combat a bit. Right now, you can shoot so many arrows into a Trophy Hunter that they look like a bipedal porcupine before running up to you, and ripping off your face. The team is going to adjust their damage and health values a bit to make fighting more fun, but still challenging.

We’re making some improvements to mutant models and animations, and are improving the existing AI in the game to help fix a few bugs we uncovered. We’ve upgraded ranged AI to help players take full advantage of natural cover, and all the hard work we put into buildings to hide behind. We’re adding another type of Trophy Hunter for players to deal with, as well as a whole new group of terrors to encounter in the areas we’re working on.

With the new and improved horrors of the jungle to deal with, we’re making some weapon improvements too. We’re adding a number of audio features like reloading sounds, and fixes to attenuation and ricochet sounds. We’re fixing a bug where a players M4A1 will move around independent of their hands. This is a great feature for shooting around corners, but we’re not really into phantasmal riflery. We’re adding impact decals for gunshots to make things look more realistic, and misses will sometimes kick up a little dirt now as well.

Lastly, we’re fixing some social player items and game features too. The ability to block players has just been completed, so you can now easily ignore the annoying or needy with the click of a button. Inventory stacks can be split into manageable piles, and we’re fixing a bug to make sure medkits will heal poison now. While it can be fun and tingly for the first few minutes, nobody likes to stay poisoned for however long they have left. We’re adjusting how far away the sound of jumping carries, and are making sure that all the ammo boxes now contain ammo, which isn’t the case currently. We’re also adjusting how easy it is to see campfire smoke at a distance, so you can provide other players with a live action version of your favorite scary campfire story, or just make new friends. Whatever you’re in to.

That’s it for now. We’ll be back next week with more updates.

DEV

Time To Go On A Quest

This week the team started off by circling back to refine and build out a number of player and social features. We’re looking into ways to highlight our affiliate program, and improve its usability. We looked at how a few other games use theirs, and discussed at some length what would work best for us. This led to a conversation about gifting Kula, our premium currency, to other players, and using it to buy packages or merchandise to give to your friends or fellow House members.

We looked at the House sign up and creation process. Remember, if you want to go fast in Lahaina, go alone. If you want to go far, go together. We started a list of House improvements, and other issues we found too confusing in other social aspects of the game. We talked a bit about bundling game packages to make it easier for people to buy copies of the game for their friends, as well as clearer notifications to tell when your friends are online, or playing the game.

Jared cleared out a few bugs on the web page, and dug into some form validation work. After finding a bug with how the forums work last week, we decided to take them out of iframes, and figure out a better way to incorporate them on the page. Jesse finished the design for the ingame shipping/logistics company Alohagistics. Instead of the boring old crates, and boxes found around the map, players will now find a good mix of packages from 2050’s cheapest shipping solution. Alohagistics – Get There Eventually.
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We continue to push ahead with crafting improvements. Jesse has finished the last of the wireframes and we just need to hook them up. He’s still doing some rollover work on inventory items, and addressing a few minor bugs. With a little ui polish, we hope to have the first iteration of the system working by next week. We also took a look at our old keybindings, and made a few minor changes to make certain actions in the game more intuitive, while keeping things like shooting, running, jumping, and crouching in the usual places.

After a lot of hard work on our quest demo this sprint, it’s completed and moved from staging to production. Certain Trophy Hunters now throw things at players more macabre than pineapples, and we fixed a bug that would crash the game when a player would throw a weapon. We’ve worked out the bugs with the zipline, so you can now enjoy a panoramic trip from the top of the Communication Tower, and actually stop at the bottom. We’ve: fixed some audio issues, finalized the quest dialog, populated the areas around the tower with loot and quest items, and worked out the lighting as you can see from what’s left of this tiny park near the tower.
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We’ve completed models for the next group of mutants to chase and murder players, as well as fixed many of our weather issues (before we upgrade trueSky next sprint), and made a lot of performance improvements. However, with all the work we put into the quest demo, we didn’t quite finish a few goals. We’re carrying over a few things into the next sprint including finally biting the bullet and updating to UE 4.20.2. We’ll have more on that later this week.

DEV

Dangerous Canned Goods and Bug Hunting

With sprint 26 coming to an end this week, the teams are busy adding the finishing touches to a number of tasks, and hunting down some remaining bugs.

The web team has corrected a number of issues on the page that have been hurting our SEO, and have implemented some improvements to give us a boost. They fixed a few rendering issues, and Jesse continues to push forward with onboarding improvements, and streamlining our referrer section. We want to make the sign up process as easy and intuitive as possible, as well as, explain the benefits you receive when you get your friends to sign up, and adventure through the wilds of Lahaina with you.

Jesse has also been working on the logo for the ingame shipping company responsible for the numerous boxes players find abandoned around the map, or hoarded inside buildings. We looked at various colors, and cover schemes, and had a blast coming up with absurdly funny taglines fitting the humor in the game.

Terry is busy finishing up some server documentation, and taking a break every now and then to do some debugging work. He is looking into the cause of an occasional crashing issue we’ve ran into, and working on a rendering problem with the ocean and the sky creeping until they have replaced everything else in your field of view. While I would argue that there is a solid 10 minutes of fun in the movie Waterworld, we’re not looking to make a homage game to the movie, maybe for the guy stuck at the bottom of the tanker, but definitely not the film as a whole. We discussed at some length the best time to start the upgrade to UE 4.20, and having Terry available to focus on any integration issues we run into.

With our first quest/advanced tutorial coming up around the corner, everyone has been: running around, shooting, jumping, crouching, crawling, harvesting, and building to find and fix as many bugs as we can. We’ve found a few including: ongoing zipline issues, echoing footsteps that persist beyond the underground spawn area, strangely sized doors inside buildings, and players being able to walk through some of the props around the map, but by far the most enjoyable is the can gun. For reasons unknown as of yet, if you eat food out of a can while you have a pistol equipped the two will sometimes merge. There’s no doubt that if you break out the peaches to host an emergency meeting, nobody would expect a gun as an accompaniment, cinnamon maybe, but not a pistol. Below you can see a short video of the infamous can gun complete with reloading.

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Our drone work continues with the team smoothing out, and finalizing its initial flight path until we build out more of the map. The drone will cover the game live highlighting the best action, places of interest, and the most beautiful places in post-fracture Lahaina. We discussed the possibility of specific drone streams in the future featuring certain aspects of the game like: combat, wildlife, main buildings, or even specific groups down the road.

Lastly, work on our first quest continues. We are making some last minute changes to the look of some of the buildings and vehicles players will be searching through for specific items. Some audio and animation improvements are in the pipeline, but most of our time this sprint has been focused on trying perfect the games lighting, especially at night. You can see in this shot of the Communication Tower entrance and the area immediately outside, how much that work is paying off.
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Check back later in the week for more updates and screenshots.

DEV

Lighting Paths and Cloudy Skies

The web team continues to dig into the player profile page making improvements, and streamlining the friends and referral process. Jesse put on his research hat this week, and looked into a number of other games, picking out what works, and what seems confusing. Using that knowledge we looked at a number of wireframes, and talked through changes we could implement to make the process as easy, and appealing as possible.

Jared is busy hooking up some of these improvements, and we talked through some other player interactions we’d like to foster. Various incentives for things like: completing your player profile, connecting your social media favorites to the game, and uploading shots or streams of your gameplay, were discussed. We came up with a good set of rewards and bonuses we can give players in the near future, but no FRV research hats I’m afraid. That’s Jesse’s thing.

We continue to push forward with a number of audio improvements across the board. We have new sounds for picking-up and dropping items depending upon their size and what they’re made of. I personally find the clang and slight echo of an axe dropping in the underground spawn area to be strangely pleasant, while my office mate feels the clang loses it’s appeal after the 50th drop in a row. However, we both agree that it sounds realistic.

It seems as though that the skies in the game are filled predominantly with one type of cloud, the cirrus. A few weeks back Chris pointed out the flaw in TrueSky, and we requested more: cumulus, stratus, cirrocumulus, nimbostratus, and a few others we could still remembered from that section of science class in high school. We’re working on adding some variety to the sky now, as well as making some improvements to their low hanging representatives, the fog.

While we continue to populate the game map with: buildings, roads, plants and structures, this week we started adding a few other things, namely boxes and bodies. Players can find a number of different types of containers to rummage through and loot. Ranging from a cargo container to a tiny shoebox, we have a container for you. We’re working on an ingame shipping company logo to give the containers some personality, and have the auto-looting feature up and running. Most of the bodies have been pretty well looted, and are there to add an ominous feel to the forest, and serve as a warning where they are plentiful. As far as I know, none are affixed with a shipping label.

Performance improvements continue with the Veil Station upgrade. In the near future we plan on using the station as the social hub of the game, instead of the Thorcon Power Plant, which is now the main gathering point for players. We’re making some improvements to our procedural building system in order to create pre-trashed buildings. Currently, we can add rickety decks and slight damage on the fly, but have to go back and grunge up siding and roofs by hand.

One of our main focuses remains completing our first quest scenario, centered around the Communications Tower. We have the storyline, and tasks worked out, and looked at a scene breakdown of the area: where players have to go, the obstacles they will encounter, and the items available to loot. We discussed marking objectives in the HUD as point of interest, and subtle lighting cues that will point characters in the right direction at night.

The team continues to make good progress in overall lighting in the game as well. We’ve spent a lot of time improving our volumetric lighting, and making sure that areas lit up at night act as a beacon for players, but still allow them to move around stealthily. You can see the fruits of that balancing act in this shot of a shack built in what used to be a parking lot.
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We’ll be back next week with more.

DEV

Casting an Appropriate Level of Light On things

The team started off the week with some work on smoothing out the flight plan of the Veil News Network (VNN) drone. The game’s eye in the sky broadcasts a live feed of what’s going on in the game, highlighting different areas of the map, and capturing player activity. We’re also working on an “Art Bible”, that documents the look, feel, and methods we’ve used in the game, to help keep things consistent for any new faces in the future.

We’ve finished some AI improvements for ranged attacks and reloading. We found that occasionally a ranged attacker would lose confidence in their ability to hit a target at a distance and move too close. We also ran into trouble with NPCs emptying their guns and then taking time to ponder what life choices led them to be in the middle of a firefight, delaying their reloading time. We want mindless killing machines who know enough to stay out of machete reach hunting down our players, so we’re retraining our antagonists to make them appropriately deadly.

While Terry was busy doing documentation on existing servers, and updating tech documents, we revisited the old keybindings sheet and decided to make a few improvements. All the normal shoot, jump, and movement keys are right where you would expect to find them, but we mapped out a few of the other less used movement/action key in a way that is intuitive for players and easy to hit when you’re being torn apart by enemies. Of course, players can always change things in their settings if they have a set-up they prefer.

The web team was busy making some layout improvements and squashing a few bugs. Jesse reworked the game packages page to make it look better. We worked on some context menus, added a few new animations, and looked at some background/wallpaper video options to give certain sections a unique look and feel.

We’re taking a deep dive into some SEO issues we discovered, and are making some changes to improve things. We discussed a few tweaks that we plan on making to the friends system to help you find play buddies, and follow people streaming the game. We went over a number of forum improvements that we plan to roll out in the near future, and talked about updating our YouTube channel more often with different aspects of game-play.

The art team remains focused on building out the areas around the Communication Tower to support our upcoming quest/tutorial. Players will start out safe and secure in our sewer respawn area where they will learn the basics of game play: aiming/shooting/fighting, crafting, looting, harvesting resources, and moving around. They will then embark on a quest involving the tower and the surrounding area using all the skills they just learned. We’re fixing a number of little bugs and adding roads, loot, buildings, and enemies in the corridor leading up to the tower.

With so many systems and creatures ready, we’ve been putting in a lot of play time, and of course found a few bugs. We’re working on ziplines, making it easier to strap yourself in, fly across a large section of Lahaina, and hopefully stop. We’ve been having trouble with the stopping part, and that’s a pretty important part. We’ve discovered tiny puffs of poisonous clouds where they shouldn’t be, and we’ve mostly worked out our remaining weather and wind issue.

Lastly, we’ve made a lot of improvements to the game’s lighting. This shot below shows off the progress we’ve made. The large spotlight clearly illuminates an area but doesn’t wash out the dimmer bulb in the background or the stars in the sky. It’s not perfect yet, but it’s getting there. Responsive image

We’ll be back later in the week with the latest news.

DEV

Ziplines, Buildings, and Bears

The team made some good progress on streamlining crafting and improving ui this week. We added some improvements to how drag and drop works, highlighting items selected, and fixing a bug that offset where your gear got dropped in your inventory. We cleaned up some of the navigation on the crafting page to make things a little less cluttered, and made some upgrades to how scrolling works. A bug that would occasionally break scrolling was fixed, and we are adding a few context menus to help you sort through your gear and compare items.

We plan on working on a queue layout the rest of the week. This will allow players to see what they are working on, and help people playing at work determine if their gun mods will be done before their next meeting. We added some animations, and looked at background options to make the whole crafting experience look more authentic.

Terry continued his work on builds, and the East Coast mirror is up and running with a couple of us using it. Git onboarding continues with only a handful of contractors left who need to move over. We made a number of audio improvements, and discussed what still needs to be done, including a Wwise update. Chris had some concerns about our patcher, so we discussed its size and various ways we could handle it differently down the road.

A number of bugs were fixed this week in the game. The rain now actually makes a player’s clothes wet, and is visible no matter what your body position. We weren’t really feeling the 2D dry rain on the island. We also discovered a bug that sometimes makes party members flicker in and out of existence. While most of us are big fans of bouncing between worlds, it’s really hard to fix someone’s arm when their physical body is manifesting across the multiverse. At least with a traditional splint anyway.

Our new and improved campfire is almost done, with only some ui work left to do. Players will now need to feed wood to the fire if they want to: keep it burning, dry their clothes, grab a bite to eat, warm up, and talk about their day. We discussed the proper rate of burn to strike that perfect balance between having an ever-burning log, and allowing players time to do something other than harvest wood.

We grunged up many structures, and roughed up a lot of ruined roads, but we still have a lot to go. We talked about some procedural building upgrades that should save us some time, and still provide different types of damage and weathering so all of our ruins don’t look like carbon copies.

The group continues to add the final touches to the underground spawn area. We made some lighting and texture improvements to make it look appropriately dark and slimy, but still comfortable. We added some new audio so you can hear just how bad the electrical connections to the jury-rigged Nuuskin pods are. The team briefly discussed the starting equipment available to players in this area, and possible tweaks to your beginning gear.

We began work on our first quest scenario for the game. While we’re still working out the specifics, it is going to take place in the area around the Communication Tower. We looked at some existing real-world features on that part of Maui, and talked about what we wanted to include, and what we’d like to add. We circled back to our zipline discussion from last week, and looked at our first semi-working zipline demo. There are a few bugs to work out yet, as San kept going straight into the ocean his first time down. He probably would have made it all the way to what was left of Japan had he not drowned first. Even with the bugs, fast traveling from the top of the comm tower is a lot of fun.

Lastly, we continue environmental work to make the jungle and beach areas look as realistic as possible. Here you can see one of the escaped bears taking a little nap on the beach. Unless you’ve come loaded for him, it’s probably best to keep your distance.
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DEV

Towers, Trails, and Tarnished Buildings

The team has been putting a lot of work into our creature AI this week. We’re making improvements to both animals and monsters after discovering that we’re having a little trouble with AI senses. Our Trophy Hunters in particular aren’t acting like keen predators, tracking down players to collect grisly souvenirs like they should. Instead, you occasionally run into groups who aren’t stirred to action until you get up in their face, and invade their personal space.

We’re adding new models for a few unique types of Trophy Hunters who use different tactics in battle, and have different abilities. Right now you can tell the ranged attackers from your standard mutant because they’re wearing floppy hats. While a hat based hierarchy for creatures would be interesting, and unique, we’d rather add cool looking physical differences instead. We discussed future creature abilities we’d like to see down the road, like the ability to use weapons and gear.

Our underground spawning area is getting some attention this week too. We’ve added the finishing touches visually to your subterranean home away from home, and are adding new audio elements as well. Once they’ve collected the starting gear laid out for them, and climb up the ladder, players now face the Communication Tower. We’re focusing our next play demo on that area, and are working on a short quest scenario. As you can see from the shot below, the map leading up to the tower is looking fantastic.
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We’re making audio improvements in other areas as well. We’re adding new sounds for picking up and dropping items, and making sure that things made of wood sound different than metal items when they hit the ground. The team discussed updating all audio to Wwise, and briefly touched on the upcoming UE 4.20 upgrade.

The web team made some improvements to the shopping cart to improve user experience, and make sure everything goes smoothly with purchases. We took another look at our friend and referral system, and talked through some improvements we’d like to see down road. We want to make it as easy as possible for you to invite your friends, and reward you when they sign up and play.

Progress on filling in the game map continued this week too. The team has put a lot of time into material upgrades to improve look and performance already, and continues to put in a lot of road work to keep players moving around the map. With more time being put into the Comm Tower, we circled back to the idea of putting ziplines in a few key areas. We looked at what a few other games have done, and discussed how we’d like ours to work, as well as where they would lead. We’re currently using clouds of poisonous gas to keep players inside the areas we’ve completed on the map, and discussed other options for borders once the whole game area is complete.

The art team is busy taking the beautiful buildings and roads they made, and roughing them up so they better represent the toll of the great fracture, and decades of neglect. It’s a long process, but we’re coming up with some great ways to streamline the grunging. Below you can see some of the fruits of our anti-home improvement efforts with: cracked foundations, faded paint, weathered siding, and a nice layer of moss growing on the outside of one of our ruined homes.
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DEV

Building Houses and the Roads Most Traveled

As the end of the week approaches, the team continues to focus on group play features. We’re making a few ui improvements to the inventory to better highlight what items you have equipped, or loaded in your quick bar. We’re making it easier for you to find online friends or House members who might be interested in running through the jungle with you. However, we know that not every match, or group is made in heaven, so we’re adding a way to kick members out of your team. In addition, we’re adding blocking tools so you won’t have to deal with them, or anyone else who is bothering you, again.

The team is pulling in some new audio elements to various parts of the map. We’re working on areas by the water to make sure the beach sounds great, and different from what you hear once you’ve crossed the tree line. A few of the game’s unique buildings have been placed on the map, namely the Thorcon Power Plant, Communications Tower, and the Lahaina Armory. We’re making sure each one of these structures has its own sound, so you can tell what building you’re in just by listening to your speakers.

Much of last sprint was dedicated to stripping down the map and rebuilding it. With that work mostly done, a large part of sprint 25 is dedicated to populating the map, and finishing the roads and trails. Below you can see a section of the map where the ruins of a neighborhood will soon go.
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We’re using the automated building system we created to procedurally build the houses and structures that survived the global catastrophe, and fill out the map. The system allows us a wide range of customization so players won’t have to look at slightly different versions of the same 2 or 3 houses all over. Having already imported all the existing roads in Lahaina, we’re using a similar procedural path tool to make sure that any new trails are connected to the existing network, and don’t needlessly twist and turn. We still have to rough up the roads, and buildings to show the damage the fracture did to everything, but below is a shot of how good everything is looking already.
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As you can see from above, we’ve made some improvements to weather and lighting. The rain and fog is getting some more attention, and we continue to work on our night time lighting, tweaking the brightness of stars, and making sure buildings don’t excessively illuminate the surrounding areas. We talked a bit more about giving certain creatures in a group different abilities and tactics, like being able to use missile weapons, or other ranged attacks, and we continue to improve their AI to make them more dangerous.

Everyone is finally moved over to Git, much to Terry’s joy, and we fixed a longstanding spawning bug. The web team made some layout changes, and did a little ui work to improve user flow. Lastly, the art team is busy making a 3D model of our repair/refurbish machine. Used to clean and repair clothing and armor, the machine saves players from the dangers of torn body armor, and the embarrassment of being killed while wearing dirty unmentionables.

That’s everything for now. We’ll be back next week with more updates and screenshots

DEV

Creature Calls and Putting It All Together

As the week comes to an end, the team is hard at work making improvements to the crafting system. We discussed adding a few new recipes to the list of craftable items, and talked about different ways players could discover new recipes. We’re working on the drag and drop system to shake out all the bugs, and introducing sorting options to make the player inventory screen more manageable for those who believe in leaving no trinket, or piece of garbage behind. In addition, Nelson is making it easier for players to see what items in their inventory are equipped.

We briefly talked about game merchandise, and a few different Hawaiian-esque products. Jesse showed off the work he’s completed on the Paddle Creek Games bumper trailer, and it’s coming along really well. We talked about making a few audio changes, and possible animation tweaks. The web team fixed some bugs, and made some layout improvements too. The group discussed the problems we’ve been having with the Veil News Network (VNN) live stream on the front page. We’ve made sure that a prerecorded video of the game area plays when the live feed is down.

With a landscape as beautiful as Lahaina’s, we want lighting, and a weather system that is equally striking. Few things can be as scary as hunting something, or being hunted by something, in the fog. The team is working out some of the issues we’ve had with the rain and mist, to make it feel more realistic, and make it a potential factor in gameplay. We want the nights to feel dark and ominous, with players never sure what might be lurking in the brush just ahead, but we don’t want it so dark that you can’t move around without running into trees, or falling into a ravine. To that end, we’re adjusting light sources, and making sure the stars are bright enough to allow players to operate at night.

All of our loot drops are ready, and they’re being tested in the game to work out any remaining problems. Soon, players will be able to harness their urge to shoot, ambush, maim, and kill for certain rewards, not just a general love of mayhem. We’ve added more audio to our monsters so they sound as gruesome as they look, and discussed giving certain individuals in a group extra abilities, like using ranged attacks to keep players on their toes.

With the Wash Bench design complete, the team is working on a 3D model so players will be able to repair/clean clothing, and maybe even change the color of something down the road. Sorry, tie-dye lovers, we don’t have any plans, as of yet, that would allow you to set up shop. The Thorcon Power Plant and the Lahaina Armory are being placed on the map, and the team is working on incorporating some basic gameplay elements around them. They’re also adding placeholder lockout tiles around the border of the map to let players know that they’ve gone as far as they can go in one direction. We plan on eventually using natural boundaries like the ocean, lava fields, and cliffs as well as impenetrable ruins, poison clouds, and radioactive fog to mark the boundaries.

Since we stripped down the map, and were rebuilding much of it during the last sprint, we talked about areas of exploration that we could add to the mountains, and more remote locations. The group discussed, quarries, canyons, mines, and other places to loot and pillage. We also briefly discussed clearing land, and possible base construction at some point in the future.

Finally, we’ve finished adding the improved plants and road remnants to the map, and we’re ready to push the whole thing from staging to production. The new environmental work, and foliage looks absolutely incredible as you can see from these screenshots below.
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We’ll be back with more next week.

DEV

Maps and Mechanics

This week marks the beginning of sprint 25, and the team is busy filling in the new map, as well as finishing up some features, and hunting down bugs found in the previous sprint. After stripping down the previous map, and rebuilding it literally from the ground up with topographical data of Maui, we’ve started to place some of the game’s unique buildings. The Thorcon Power Plant, and the Lahaina Armory will be added to the landscape this week, and if all goes well, we plan on moving staging and production to the new map. We’ve fixed some of our weather problems. Rain, fog, and storms look better, and we’re working on the lighting, ensuring that the game looks good morning, noon, and night. Below you can see the VNN drone’s eye view of the Communication Tower as the sun goes down.
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The team wrapped up a lot of work on the group play system too. The healing others mechanic is getting some attention. We’re adding medkits, and the ability to target specific limbs, so you can fix a friend’s injured leg and get out of trouble when your about to be overrun. Much of the party ui is being finished this week too. We’re adding a blocking feature to safeguard you from annoying players, and a way to remove players from your friends list in case you decide they no longer have the kind of qualities you look for in a survival buddy.

The first round of weapon attachments are in, and we fixed all the bugs we ran into with oversized scopes and suppressors. Weapons now have a limited set of specific attachments for their type, bad news for fans of bipod compound bows and laser sighted machetes. The next round of weapon attachments including extended mags, and stability grips, are being worked on now. The group is finishing up the last few bugs in our loot drop scenarios, but need to test them in the game to make sure they are fully functional. We talked a bit about loot distribution across the map, and adjusting loot and looting times based on container size.

Monster AI moved a few steps forward. We continue to work on the first iteration of wave/group combat, so the horrors of the jungle don’t bunch up, or queue in a doorway when the whole group attacks at the same time. We added better senses to our monsters this week, so they can not only attack on sight, but zero in on anyone stomping through the underbrush too. We talked about adjusting senses up and down to make theoretical cave dwellers with limited sight, but phenomenal hearing and sense of smell, as well as other combinations.

We’re almost done moving everyone over to Git, and discussed at length the pros and cons of moving over to UE 4.20. We’re fixing some issues that leave players in limbo when spawning in, and the Veil News Network (VNN) drone is getting some final touches to make it fully functional. Nelson is working on a few HUD tweaks to improve look and functionality.

Lastly, we’re adding a few new animations, and making some icon improvements to better highlight equipped items. The art team is working on completing a final Wash Bench design, so players can fix clothing, and change the color/look of certain items. Last sprint’s audio work is wrapping up, with weapon updates and some new character audio being added. We’re giving our monsters a voice too, so we can finally ask the age old question, “if a trophy hunter screams in the forest and nobody is around to hear it, does it make a sound?”

That’s all for now. We’ll be back later in the week with more updates.